Jet service offers college-tour package -- for the price of tuition

High-schoolers can now charter a private jet to visit their colleges of choice — if they have $43,500.

Magellan Jets offers a personal college-tour service that enables students and parents to visit as many as eight prospective schools in one weekend or, in some cases, a single day.

The college-tour package, which has a booking minimum of 10 hours and starts at $43,500, is available through June 30.

So far, four tours have been sold, said Gregory Belezerian, vice president of Boston-based Magellan, in an interview with USA TODAY Network.

Magellan books the campus tours and even decks out the jet with swag from the colleges, he said.

The idea for the college tour originated, he said, with busy Magellan clients who wanted to save time visiting college campuses.

In one recent trip, a student was able to visit Northwestern, Duke and Syracuse in a single day, he said.

"With somebody who's running a large company, the resource they have the least amount of is time," Belezerian said. "This allows them to get it back."

A resource they'd need a lot of? Money.

The price tag for the jet service comes in well over the average yearly cost of tuition for many colleges. Average annual tuition is $22,203 for out-of-state public schools and $30,094 for a four-year private nonprofit college, according to 2013-14 data from the College Board.

Private jets aside, students should try to visit the top three to five schools on their short list, Eric Sparks, assistant director of the American School Counselor Association, told USA TODAY Network.